Bloodlust: Predawn
by Bug-in-a-Rug
Summary: Rated R to be safe. Angst and Romance to. One-shot. The final battle is between just Kagome and Naraku. Something changes.


Kagome sat at the base of the charred Goshinboku. Blood dried in streaks down her arm, starting at the gash in her shoulder around the size of her thumb. Brown eyes bloodshot and the skin around a cut on her forehead had turned a deep purple. Twin burns ran parallel, one beneath each eye down to her chin. Bruised and bleeding, the girl sat silently watching the blackened wood of what had been her home.  
  
**Flashback**  
  
The final battle had come when Kagome had least expected it. She had been on her way home for a couple tests when the hair on her spine stood up. She stopped suddenly, only feet from the well. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.  
  
Kagome listened. Something was missing. She could hear the wind. She could hear animals in the distance. But... something was missing.  
  
The _birds_!!!  
  
Kagome looked up toward the sky. Dark clouds had already hung themselves over the forest. But she was certain that the sky was clear when she had left the village...  
  
She listened harder. Anything. Anything that would prove her wrong about... whatever it was she was feeling. But there was nothing. Nothing. The birds were gone. Not a chirp, not a flutter of wings... Nothing.  
  
Something was very, very wrong.  
  
Kagome closed her eyes and tried to suppress a whimper. Something was behind her. Slowly, fear still gripping her by the heart, she turned.  
  
Naraku stood behind her, blocking the path to the village.  
  
Kagome screamed and suddenly found his hands around her neck.  
  
"I wouldn't be calling for them. You'd only be wasting precious breath. They've been..." a malicious grin could be seen through the mouth of the baboon cloak, "... taken care of."  
  
Kagome went cold. Tears began streaking down her face. "No..." Then she did something she'd never done before. She punched him.  
  
It wasn't by any means a strong hit, but it had hit him at the side of his chin. Added with her purifying energy and the shock of the blow, she'd managed to at least make him loose his grip. Kagome took off in the direction of the village, shedding her back pack in the passage.  
  
Her feet pounded the path in harmony with her racing heart, Kagome knew somehow that Naraku wasn't even trying to stop her. He was letting her go. To see whatever he had done. She suddenly felt very cold.  
  
Kagome saw smoke over the treetops. Speeding up, she picked up a branch in passing. It wasn't much but it would help her fight off whatever might stop her from aiding her friends. From aiding her family. She could still save them.  
  
Reaching the crest of the hill before the village, Kagome scanned for the fields. For any sign of life, even just a farmer. Looking toward the rice fields to the North, she only caught a flicker of golden red and a puff of smoke.  
  
It was only a second before Kagome reached the edge of the village. She was suddenly hit with the smoke, and in seconds she was coughing. Pulling teary eyes from the ground, Kagome pulled off her scarf and tied it around her nose and mouth, hoping to block out the killing fog.  
  
Taking off again towards the center of the village, Kagome's eyes scanned rapidly, desperately, for any living thing. Every hut was either burning, or already ash on the roadside. She caught the smell of burning flesh moments before she reached the turn leading to the center of the village and took it at full speed.  
  
And skidded to a painful stop.  
  
What must have been every person in the village- men, women, and even children- were stacked high in the center, burning in a bonfire. They were all dead, but Kagome could swear she could still hear their cries, their screaming. Her eyes traveled over each body, each life ended, until she reached something that made her heart stop.  
  
A glove. Purple. Beads.  
  
Scanning again she found more.  
  
Demon bone. Curved into the shape of a boomerang.  
  
Red beads. The subduing necklace...  
  
"No..."  
  
And they landed on a form standing tall. A face that was grinning. Eyes that were very much alive.  
  
Kagome gaped, "How could you?"  
  
"What?" Kouga asked innocently, "You thought I was a good guy?" He laughed, "I got bored. So what. These humans were weak." He stopped smiling and growled, "The trick was getting dog-turd. I had to cut off his arm before he'd stop using that stupid sword." Kagome's eyes widened and spilled tears down her cheeks.  
  
"You..." Kagome shook. A piece of her broke. A piece that had been waiting to break for a long time. "... You... MONSTER!" She took a leap towards him, dropping the stick and catching him by surprise while put her hands around his neck. "I'LL KILL YOU!"  
  
Kouga gasped and tried to pull her hands away, but in return the pads of his hands burned from her priestess energy. Her eyes were glowing a reddish pink. Her small mouth was pulled into a demonic scowl, and her hands glowed.  
  
She began to change. Her eyes burned red, bleeding tears of fire that scalded trails down her cheeks. Her short, human fingernails grew to a dull point and caught fire, beginning to burn Kouga's neck. Her canines grew and spilled drops of blood from her gums and down her bottom lip and chin. Fire trailed across her tongue, catching the scarf around her neck that fell from her face to Kouga's chest still burning. Fire slithered down her wrists and fingers, leaving lined scars across her wrists and angry red skin across her fingers. Her whole body stretched, bones cracking as they changed position and grew.  
  
For anyone else it would have been painful. Her skin stretched taught across her muscles before it changed as well, paling and losing any flaw. Her eyes pulled to points, curving to the side with the grace of the flames which burned across her hair, staining streaks of it red with the blood of fire.  
  
This was true, pure hate. And it was enough to change her heart to that of a demon.  
  
Kouga suddenly grinned. His grin faded and the light in his eyes disappeared, leaving a corpse on the ground that suddenly fell to pieces. Kagome's red eyes widened in surprise and she dropped what was left of his neck.  
  
Bleeding mouth open in surprise and red eyes wide, she stared at the already rotting corpse of the demon before her. The demon she had known. And the demon she suddenly realized could never have done what was done here. He had cared about her. Cared too much to do this to her.  
  
"A fitting end, don't you think?" Kagome knew that voice. Tensing for the fight that her demonic instincts knew was coming, she didn't turn. She waited. "To die the death of his pack. I actually did get to use that particular puppet to fight the half-breed." Kagome growled. She could almost feel Kugaura tense behind her. Oh... so they didn't know she had changed?  
  
She spun around and jumped at her, pinning her down in seconds. She had both of the wind demonness' hands above her head with one hand holding both wrists, one hand with burning fingers curled around her neck, and both legs holding her down at the waist. She watched as Kagura's eyes widened in shock and her mouth opened and closed before her.  
  
"A fitting end." Kagome growled in a harsh voice that was so different from the one of the innocent girl who had died with her friends tonight.  
  
"You... You can't possibly be Inu Yasha's wench!"  
  
"A fitting end." Kagome repeated. "To be destroyed by someone you indirectly created." Kaguara whimpered.  
  
"I'll give a kiss to your master for you," and with a simple twist of her wrist it was over. She'd broken the demoness' neck.  
  
"Now for you, Naraku."  
  
**End Flashback**  
  
The fight with Naraku was hard to remember. Her demonic energy had begun to fight with the priestess within herself, tiring her out as well as making her unpredictably dangerous. To both Naraku and herself.  
  
Naraku had managed to get her twice with his tentacles. The first time he gashed her arm. While she was still recovering from the first blow, he brought one across the side and stabbed her through the side.  
  
Directly above where the scar of the Shikon-no-Tama had disappeared from.  
  
**Flashback**  
  
Angry at the wounds, she'd launched herself at him and locked her hands around his neck. But a whimper behind her made her pause. She turned fearful eyes toward the noise and cried out.  
  
Shippo, broken and beaten, was being held by the tail by a soulless Kohaku. Kagome let go of his neck and went to her knees while Naraku laughed. Keeping distance, not sure what the girl before him was capable of, he began to tell her of her friends death. He said that Miroku had been taken by the windtunnel. Sango had been killed by her brother. Keada's soul was stolen by Kanna. And Inu Yasha...  
  
He'd been chopped to pieces with his own sword.  
  
During his speech, they both missed something they shouldn't have. Kohaku blinked, and then let a single tear fall. Hardly moving, he turned his eyes toward his master and his brow furrowed. Kagome saw him as he turned to look at the boy in his arms. It was obvious there was a battle of wills inside him at that instance, and Kagome realized what she had to do. It all depended on him winning that battle.  
  
Springing to the side she picked up a burning bow and arrow. In a moments time she had shot it, filled with no purifying energy but instead with the strength of demonic energy. She sent it spiraling toward his heart. It only took a moment to hit, but every second of it would be forever imprinted in her mind.  
  
It did hit. And the arrow was true. It went straight through his heart, came out the other side and lodged itself into a tree behind him. Only a single flash from the ground behind him signified that something was off. Naraku's shocked expression changed to one of disgust.  
  
"Are you so weak, wench, that you couldn't even destroy part of me with your pathetic arrow?" Kagome grinned.  
  
"Oh, I destroyed a big part." Naraku frowned and gave her a suspicious look, "Where is your precious jewel?" In the time it took his eyes to widen, a streak flew through the air and dislodged his head. Kagome watched as he fell.  
  
His body began to fall to parts the moment his flesh hit the dirt. In seconds there was nothing left but dust.  
  
Kagome looked down at her hands, still coiled around the bow, then turned her now brown eyes toward Kohaku.  
  
"Thank you." Tears fell from his eyes.  
  
"What have I done?"  
  
**End Flashback**  
  
She had taken him with her to the present, along with a sleeping kit and a now purified jewel. Kagome's appearance had changed back now so that her priestess side was dominant, but the screaming in her heart and the scars on her cheeks told her that she was still very much changed.  
  
Still hanyou.  
  
They'd come to the present to find her house empty and burning. Her family had gone to visit relatives this month. They should be getting on a plane to come back tomorrow. So the only loss she'd had in the fire was Buyo, whom she had cried over, along with everyone else she'd lost.  
  
She'd sworn to the Goshinboku tree that if she had to become a killer or a full demon, she'd do it to protect the two children now in her care. And she knew right away what the first step had to be.  
  
They'd have to disappear.  
  
AN: WOOOHOOO!!! I FINISHED IT! This is my one-shot fic that _MAY_ have a sequel. It's all up to how you vote. Here's some questions.  
  
a) Should I keep the Inu crew dead?  
  
b) Kagome WILL be paired up with Hiei (if I make the story) but should I make her be hired to kill him or just hired to take out the Yu yu crew???  
  
c) Kagome will be leaving home. Probably without explanation. Should she have her own battles to fight? As in a different story-line not involving missions or whatever. I'm probably going to do that anyways but I want to hear if you guys like it or not.


End file.
